Addressing Deliberate Exclusions in Mahabharata Through Kavita Kane's
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Living on the fringes: Addressing deliberate exclusions in Mahabharata through Kavita Kane’s Karna’s Wife – The Outcast’s Queen Karna’s Wife: The Outcast’s Queen, written by Kavita Kane is a mythological novel published in 2013. This is the first novel of Kavita Kane. The novel tells the extra ordinary story of Karna, the unsung hero and the drastic change in Uruvi’s life after marrying an outcast. The project entitled “Living on the fringes: Addressing deliberate exclusions in Mahabharata through Kavita Kane’s Karna’s Wife – The Outcast’s Queen” was to find the marginalized elements in the novel of Kavita Kane. Marginalization is a process by which something or someone is pushed to the edge of a group. It is a social phenomenon by which a minority or subgroup is excluded and their needs or desires are ignored. The project is composed of three chapters. The chapter one is all about theory – Marginalization, which speaks about the social discrimination, social inequality and social stratification. Chapter two is about the unsung hero Karna, an outcast and his kshatriya wife Uruvi, the humiliations, troubles and struggles faced by her after marrying Karna and the third chapter is about the forgotten heroines of Mahabharata. This dissertation tries to give voice to the marginalized characters in Mahabharata. P V Aswathy Reg no:170021017782 Living on the fringes: Addressing deliberate exclusions in Mahabharata through Kavita Kane’s Karna’s Wife – The Outcast’s Queen Project submitted to the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam in partial recognition of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature (Model II – Teaching) P V Aswathy Register Number: 170021017782 Sixth Semester Department of English St. Paul’s College Kalamassery 2017-2020 Declaration I do hereby declare that the project “Living on the fringes: Addressing deliberate exclusions in Mahabharata through Kavita Kane’s Karna’s Wife – The Outcast’s Queen” is the record of genuine research work done by me under the guidance of Ms. Princy Dharmaj, Assistant Professor, Department of English, St Paul’s College, Kalamassery. P V Aswathy Certificate This is to certify that the project work “Living on the fringes: Addressing deliberate exclusions in Mahabharata through Kavita Kane’s Karna’s Wife – The Outcast’s Queen” is the record of the original work carried out by P V Aswathy under the supervision and guidance of Ms. Princy Dharmaj, Assistant Professor, Department of English, St. Paul’s College, Kalamassery. Dr. Saliya Rex Ms. Princy Dharmaj Head of the Department Instructor in-charge Department of English Department of English St. Paul’s College St. Paul’s College Kalamassery Kalamassery Acknowledgement I would like to thank Ms. Princy Dharmaj for her assistance and suggestions during the writing of this project. This work would not have taken its present shape without her painstaking scrutiny and timely interventions. I thank Dr. Saliya Rex, Head of Department of English for her suggestions and corrections. I would also thank my friends, teachers, and the librarian for their assistance and support. P V Aswathy Contents Page No. Introduction 1 Chapter I 8 Chapter II 11 Chapter III 18 Conclusion 25 Work Cited 29 Introduction There is a common notion that nothing can’t beat the original one, be it in the case of music, literary works and technology. But through ages, many literary works are retold and presented in different perspectives. Retelling of epics contributes to the exploration of unraveled stories about the unsung heroes and heroines in it. It provides us with a new insight about the unknown perspectives of them in a more positive manner. Various critical reading explored the importance of unsung heroes who were neither praised nor honoured, for example, Second Turn (Randamoozham) by M. T. Vasudevan Nair, retells the story of Mahabharata from Bhima’s perspective, where Lord Krishna the master brain of Kurukshethra War is portrayed as the villain and Arjuna, the so-called hero of Mahabharata has minor role in this work, while Bhima turns out to be the hero here. And the retelling of the great epic from Bhima’s point of view helps the reader to comprehend the hero in Bhima and to perceive him well. Jaya an illustrated retelling of the Mahabharata by Devdutt Pattanaik, The Palace of illusion by Chitra Banarjee Divakaruni and The Rise of Hastinapur by Sharath Komarraju are some novels through which Mahabharata is retold. The voices of women or outcasts’ are rarely heard in the original versions, but the retold versions highly scrutinize on the suppressed groups. “There is nothing about our oldest stories that never gets old. Rereading classical mythology is for me an exercise in surprise and recognition mixed together” (Henstra). Aswathy 8 Epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana are familiar to the people of India to a very great extend. Since the Vedic literature was vast, varied and contained higher realms of thought of seers and sages, it was only understood by the learned. Here comes the revelation of such epics which were intended to impart knowledge to the common people. For Indians, they are not just religious texts, they are also a strong source of divinity, happiness, contentment, and so on. People imbibe morals and motives through the stories in them. Therefore, writers like Maheswetha Devi, Girish Karnad and Kavitha Kane chose the mere mentioners’ in these texts, then studied, analyzed and were introduced and dealt in the main stream. Writer Kavita Kane in her first novel Karna’s Wife: The Outcast’s Queen, creates an imaginary character Uruvi and retells Mahabharata through her point of view. Women had played great roles in Indian mythologies, however certain female characters are knowingly or unknowingly less established in the texts. In the attempt of focusing on the protagonist and his glories we seldom forget about the mere mentioners’. Such important but weak personalities gain prominence in retelling and their latent stories are unleashed and elevated. For example, the love, adoration, dedication and veneration of Lakshmana towards his brother Rama is illustrious. But nobody is cognizant of his wife Urmila, who asked Lakshmana to take care of her sister Sita and she sacrificed or slept the entire fourteen years of their exile, so that Lakshmana could stay awake. Alike Urmila, there are many uncelebrated heroines in mythologies including Thara, Amba, Sathyavati, Hidumbi and many more. One such woman is Kane’s Uruvi. Karna’s Wife: The Outcast’s Queen is a novel, penned by Kavita Kane and was published in 2013. Through Karna’s Wife, Kane reels off the Outcast’s Queen Uruvi, a fictional character created by Kane. The novel, told from Uruvi’s point of view, unfolds Aswathy 9 against the backdrop of the epic struggle between the Panadavas’ and the Kauravas’. The seed of marginalization was strewn throughout the human history and the consequences of which we ripe in the name of casteism. The novel justifies itself as a work based on marginalization. It also attempts to have a vast study of this topic of pointing out the humiliations and insults faced by the so-called Sutaputra – Karna and his Queen Uruvi, who lived a magnificent and indulgent life before marriage and the drastic change that came about in her life after being the Outcast’s Queen. Kavita Kane is an Indian writer well known for her writings on Mythology fiction. She is an alumna of Fergusson College, Pune and completed her Post graduation in English literature and mass communication in the University of Pune. She worked for 20 years in various media houses. Kane calls herself a true-blue Puneite, despite having been born in Mumbai and grown in Patna and Delhi. Having studied and lived in Pune for many years, she considers herself as good as married to the city, where she lives with her mariner husband, Prakash, two teenage daughters, Kimaya and Amiya. Karna’s Wife is her first novel which turned into a grand success, after this novel she became a full time author. All of her work focuses on the unpraised heroines of Hindu mythologies. She had initially contemplated making Vrushali – Karna’s first wife as the protagonist but realized she was limiting in the scope of the character. Uruvi was thus created out of dramatic licence. She is fierce, righteous, outspoken yet fallible. In an interview to The Hindu, Kane points out that: “I wanted a woman who would see him for what he was: a tragic hero with a flaw. A wife was the best to see him not just as a husband but as a political person, as a hero, a warrior, a condemned, conflicted and torn man…At first, I wondered if the Aswathy 10 story should be told through his mother’s eyes but finally decided on the wife. After all she was his partner, his conscience.” “Marginalization has been conventionally understood in a specific societal context and with distinctive connotation to delineate social groups living in peripheral and adverse situations and on time with alleged negative attributes” (Singharoy). Marginalized group is viewed with hostility and bitterness, and it is an experience affecting millions of people throughout the world. The forms of marginalization are very, and it changes from country to country. It is true that more marginalized group exist in third world, especially in developing nations. Women, people with disabilities, dalits, aged people, children, minorities, poor, sexual minorities, etc. are most vulnerable marginalized groups in almost every society. Kane’s Karna’s Wife – The Outcast’s Queen also speaks about the marginalization in mythologies. The first few chapters of the novel speak about Uruvi, princess of Pukeya Kingdom, the only daughter of King Vahusha and Queen Shubra.